Radiomaton

Le Radiomaton is an interactive installation based on Marie Béland’s choreographic piece Beside. Presented as a photo booth and equipped with headphones broadcasting a local radio station, the public experiencing the Radiomaton must repeat the words that they hear, while reproducing a series of gestures that are presented to them on a video monitor. Their filmed performance, mixing movements and words that are disconnected, is later presented on the main booth monitor.

Proposing an experience of mental overload characterized, among other things, by the dissociation between reproduced gestures and repeated words, the work offers users the possibility of seeing themselves mechanically replaying what has been presented to them by integrating snippets of these performances into a video carrousel. The disconnect between “movement” and “discourse” is thus accentuated, bringing out particular aspects of each participant: the normativity of bodily expression, the semiology of gesture and informational entropy.

By playing with the codes of installation art and presenting the work in the public space rather than in a gallery, the artists create a space that is easy for the public to enter, but which nonetheless disturbs, by casting the public as “performer” of the work, what is staged, what is a mise en scène.

RADIOMATON

Credits

Co-Creation: Marie Béland, Simon Laroche

Performers: Rachel Harris, Bernard Martin, Sylvain Lafortune

Co-production & artistic partnership: Montréal Danse, Maribé – sors de ce corps